Scalding Live Chickens Is an Accepted Brutal Business ModelA Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

All of God's creatures have rights, a fact that most people don't seem to
recognize. This includes both human and non-human animals, but not all of them
can speak for themselves. As we continue to disregard the value of the lives of the billions of animals we eat, we also are
destroying our air, land and water.

FROM

We don't need more science, we need more action that
can easily and solidly be based on what we already know about how these
animals deeply suffer.

The bottom line is that billions of food animals
suffer the most enduring and deep pain as they're brutalized to become
meals, and we must stop this heinous treatment right now. We don't need to
wait for "the science" nor for politicians to get involved. Everyone can do
this right now—today—simply by choosing other meal plans.

The Agriculture Department calculates that about 700,000 chickens a year
in the United States are “not slaughtered correctly”—often a euphemism for
being scalded to death.

The company that operates the slaughterhouse, Wayne Farms, said it had
reviewed the video and found no evidence of abuse. A spokesman, Frank
Singleton, said that the company uses “industry-standard methods of humane
slaughter.”

Nicholas Kristof's New York Times "To Kill a Chicken" is a
must read

Media is extremely important in spreading all sorts of news to a broad,
and often unknowing public. Recently, an investigative essay by Michael Moss
in the New York Times told the story of the ways in which nonhuman animals
(animals) called "food animals" are brutalized at a Nebraska research
facility, all in the name of profit (please see "'Food Animals'" Brutalized
at Federally Funded "'Meat Lab'" for details).

What I found interesting
about Mr. Moss's essay is that it generated bipartisan support in the U. S.
Congress to stop the torture of these "research animals." As a researcher I
was astounded that it took an essay in the New York Times, not scientific
essays about animal sentience nor popular reports about these essays, to
motivate politicians to get involved in protecting these animals. We don't
need more science, we need more action that can easily and solidly be based
on what we already know about how these animals deeply suffer.

Another essay in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof called
"To Kill a
Chicken (link is external)" also caught my eye. It begins:

"If you torture a
single chicken and are caught, you’re likely to be arrested. If you scald
thousands of chickens alive, you’re an industrialist who will be lauded for
your acumen. That’s my conclusion after reviewing video footage taken by an
undercover investigator for Mercy for Animals (link is external), an animal
rights group. The investigator said he worked for two months in a North
Carolina poultry slaughterhouse and routinely saw chickens have their legs
or wings broken, sometimes repeatedly — or, worse, be scalded to death."

Mr. Kristof's essay is not for the weak at heart so here are a few
tidbits.

What’s striking about the undercover video, which Mercy for Animals plans
to release on its website this weekend, is the speed of the assembly line,
leading workers to fall behind in ways that inflict agony on the chickens.
It’s a process that maximizes productivity and profits, and also pain.

Workers grab the birds and shove their legs upside down into metal
shackles on a conveyor belt. The chickens are then carried upside down to an
electrified bath that is meant to knock them unconscious. The conveyor belt
then carries them—at a pace of more than two chickens per second—to a
circular saw that cuts open their necks so that they bleed to death before
they are scalded in hot water and their feathers plucked.

The Agriculture Department calculates that about 700,000 chickens a year
in the United States are “not slaughtered correctly”—often a euphemism for
being scalded to death.

The company that operates the slaughterhouse, Wayne Farms, said it had
reviewed the video and found no evidence of abuse. A spokesman, Frank
Singleton, said that the company uses “industry-standard methods of humane
slaughter.”

Think about that. If a naughty boy pulls feathers out of a single
chicken, he’s punished. But scald hundreds of thousands of chickens alive
each year? That’s a business model.

Supposedly "dumb" animals don't suffer less than "smarter" animals

Mr. Kristof also writes, "I raised chickens as a farmboy. They’re not as
smart as pigs or as loyal as dogs, but they make great moms, can count (link
is external) and have distinct personalities. They are not widgets." I just
want to point out, as have many others, that there is no relationship
between intelligence and loyalty and suffering. Supposedly "dumber" animals
do not suffer less than "smarter" animals (please see "Do 'Smarter' Dogs
Really Suffer More than 'Dumber' Mice?" and "Are Pigs as Smart as Dogs and
Does It Really Matter?"). Cross-species comparisons are fraught with error
and each individual's pain is her or his own pain.

I also like to ask the generic questions, "Would you do it to your dog?"
or "Would you allow a dog to be treated like other mammals or food animals
who are brutally tortured on the way to our mouth?" When I ask these
questions some people are incredulous and ask me why I do so. For one, they
point out the inconsistency with which we treat other animals and these
questions have always yielded very valuable discussions and the emotional
lives of the sentient beings with whom we interact in a wide variety of
venues.

Pardon our obliviousness to the pain and suffering of other animals

Who (not what) we eat is on the minds of many people and the conclusion
of a another essay in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof called "Can We
See Our Hypocrisy to Animals? (link is external)" is a good way to end this
essay. Mr. Kristof writes, "May our descendants, when, in the future, they
reflect uncomprehendingly on our abuse of hens and orcas, appreciate that we
are good and decent people moving in the right direction, and show some
compassion for our obliviousness."

I'm thrilled to see these essays appearing in the New York Times and hope
they really serve to make a change in how food animals are treated. I leave
it to you to decide whether to read them, but be assured that when you eat
chicken and other "food animals" you're eating pain. Of course, the bottom
line is that billions of food animals suffer the most enduring and deep pain
as they're brutalized to become meals, and we must stop this heinous
treatment right now. We don't need to wait for "the science" nor for
politicians to get involved. Everyone can do this right now—today—simply by
choosing other meal plans.

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